Leaving insight aside, I´m writing here to make a case for the more widespread use of qualitative depth interviews in the evaluation of advertising and to argue that they can be fairer, less stressful and ultimately, safer for your TV work.

Planners are often taught that qualitative depth interviews are a nice technique; the best way to assess print work, and to talk to „hard to reach“ audiences about „difficult“ subjects.

So, depths are relatively neglected. In fact, research companies don´t push depths because they are time consuming and company profitability is predicated on the group unit. Clients often don´t go for them either. Firstly, they have a lower entertainment value than groups – which are efficient and fun for busy marketers. Secondly, they can be expensive. If you use a decent researcher you can find yourself with quite a restricted sample. Although we are taught to write that sample size isn´t the point of Qual in research proposuals, nerve sometimes falters if we are talking about 10, 12 or 16 respondents. However, I´d say keep the faith – you either believe in the argument for the particular value of qualitative or you don´t.

Of course, groups are fantastic for creative sessions of any kind; which is why we all choose to work in them. But regrettably, true „creative development“ research, in which consumers are actively encouraged to improve early ideas, is in decline. This means that late Pre-Testing – „evaluation“ – is the most common type of research actually being done on advertising.

So why do I think dephts can be fairer, less stressful and safer as an evaluative tool?

Firstly, although there are some methods to aim off for this, groups are an unsatisfactory way to get accurate individual responses. For example, if you are testing communication, very few respondents who haven´t got the gist of an idea on first viewing are going to admit that publicly once someone else in the group has interpreted it for them. To often on matters of interpretation you end up with the leading response of one or two respondents per group anyway. So much for the nominal sample size.

Secondly, clients complain that groups too often do not match the resulsts of subsequent quant tests. These tests are based on individual interviewing.

Thirdly, apart from being inferior as a purely analytical method, groups are also highly stressful for the planner. Much advertising lives or dies in the gladiatorial combat of viewed groups in central London. These are noisy, opinionated events. Sometimes it´s hard to decide which side of the glass divide is concentrating on the response least – the client and agency side who have come to mark each other off and scoff at the dress sense of the captives in the human zoo. Or the respondents who are tired, swayed by the need to display to their peers, or in the case of multiple attenders deeply bored with the whole process and uninterested in helping you with your justly treasured ad.

Advertising evaluation is unpleasant enough – it certainly doesn´t need to be turned into a blood sport.

The depth interview respondent cannot drift off into their own thoughts, chat with mates from the previous group or contemplate their second glass of chardonnay. He or she is not under peer group pressure to gang up on the ad.

The client who turns up to depths has not come for a quick consumer fix or to see one group and make hasty pronouncements. Only the most serious-minded will turn up and sit through 14 or 16 depths:

Depths:

1. Allow you to clearly understand communication over first and subsequent viewings

2. Let you probe exactly why the ad is communicating like that

3. Allow for consumer input and refinement of ideas

4. More accurately predict what might happen if the calamity of quant testing comes along

Another advantage is better individual context. You understand the speakers and the stories behind their responses. That isolated person who pops up in groups claiming that your idea is so offensive they will complain to the chairman reveals themselves early in the in-depth warm up as a maniac who bleaches their light switches and ties their kids to the bed head. In a group the clients will only hear the scary words.

Depths also replicate viewing reality: they are short. After 15 minutes you have the answer. A typical group discussion on a TV ad drags on for more than a hour. 45 minutes in, respondents are hallucinating. Sooner or later they are going to say something stupid, irrelevant and unhelpful. Why on earth give them the chance?

This isn´t just my view. The idea that qual depths have few methodological drawbacks is backed up by the better researchers with no axe to grind (see Goodthinking). In fact, the dependence on groups at evaluation stage is a very UK based phenomenon.

As a planner I got two or three good but really difficult ideas through research using depths. As an advertising researcher I´ve used them a lot.

Don´t get me wrong. Depths will expose a poorly constructed or off-strategy idea for what it is (better get a „match fixer“ in!). But if you have a good piece of communication with an unusual twist, and your client is disillusioned with „just groups“ why not give them a whirl?

Drusilla Gabbott
Oxygen Brand Consulting
07802 904 735
drusilla@gabbott.demon.co.uk

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